Last week, for my Office Lease Center blogging duties, I attended a class about how to be an effective communicator. As a recent mass communication major and public speaking tutor, I especially love this topic! Now on to the recap.

Today we all need to be great communicators, according to Win the Room CEO Kelly Hadous. Based on her theory that communication is “part power, part strategy, part performance,” she gave tips to improve as a communicator an Alley Boost class at Mercy College on October 21.

Great communicators exude energy and can influence, lead, sell, shift ideas, make a difference and get people to like them, said Hadous. She has studied communication and learned from her own life experiences. She admitted that she had to overcome her natural introverted personalities, as well as her insecurities about her past.

“We are living in a society that requires us to be extroverted,” Hadous said. Because of the Internet, she said, we all need to be more transparent.

The communications coach found that telling her personal story, although difficult, has made people feel comfortable and actually like her more. Hadous told the group that she grew up in a rough neighborhood in Staten Island and never excelled as a student. She was kicked out of 8th grade and dropped out of high school. At 19 she worked on Wall Street and went on to get degrees from NYU and Columbia and study communication.

She said telling a story is very powerful. To tell it right, you need to take the audience on a journey and have a dip.

When asked how to balance empathy, Hadous said to tell personal stories carefully. She said talking about her past makes people like her more. If it can help people, she said it is worth telling the story.

“Make sure it serves your audience and it’s appropriate,” she said.

Be audience-focused One of the most key aspects of communicating is being aware of who the audience is, Hadous said. Most presenters think about themselves and what they want to say when it’s important to consider the audience.

Another trick is to think about whether they are more left or right brained and what type of information would interest them. Left-brain people might want to hear more about what, how and the results. A right-brained audience would want more why and who.